Tuesday, September 6, 2011

NOVA: Lessons Learned

Hola
amigos.

The
dust from NOVA has settled nicely and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I
learned about Grand Tournament 40k in regards to how to be a better player and
also a better list writer. Though I
didn’t play a very competitive list, I still managed to glean a bit of useful
information from my experience that you may be interested in. Or not.
I don’t care, I’m posting it here anyway.

List Building

1. This might be peculiar to the NOVA, which
always had five objectives and table quarters in each mission, but I am 100%
sure that six troop choices are obligatory is your goal is to be
competitive. You couldbring fewer, and
definitely still give people tough games especially on kill point or victory
point missions, but there will inevitably be games where the choice to run
fewer than six will cost you. It simply
doesn’t make sense to run less than six at a NOVA style event.

2. Melta is still relevant. Light mech truly does dominate the
battlefield, but even at the top tables there was a surprisingly high amount of
AV13+. I personally faced dual or triple
Land Raiders in ¼ of my matches, and I rued the lack of melta in my list in
those matches. I said before during my
metric system posts that people can try to get away with skimping on anti-14
firepower in order to increase other stats, but skimp too far and you’ll be
punished for it eventually. Eight rounds
is a lot of games to hope for dodging heavy mech the whole time.

3. Marines and Rhinos matter. The prevalence of 3+ armies in Rhinos was
strong. Granted it was just one
tournament, but I would be shocked to see a tournament that wasn’t a 75% MEQ
field. A big criticism about my metric
system was it was too MEQ focused, and didn’t take things like Orks into
account. I think the NOVA bore out that
your testing, and thus assumptions in list building, should be primarily
focused against MEQ forces if you want to win.
When it’s safe to assume 75%+ of your opponents will be MEQ, it becomes
easier to plan. Dark Eldar and Guard
were also well represented at the top tables, but those aren’t really ‘horde’
armies as we think of them. They more
neatly fit the template of unit + vehicle.
Guard vehicles being a little harder to pop than marines, and Dark Eldar
being a little easier. But the paradigm
is the same.

Gameplay

1. Cover.
With the 4+ cover area terrain being plentiful; it definitely had an
impact on the way people played. Players
who played gunline lists complained pretty loudly that the cover neutered them;
however, I saw plenty of very shooty lists at the top tables. My tentative theory was that the shooty
players who were getting rolled used cover as an excuse to explain a loss that
was due to poor deployment or poor tactics.
That said, cover did play a big role in every match. I don’t think anyone would argue that cover
saves weren’t among the most important tactical considerations they had in
every match.

2. Previously, I have advocated playing 3 turn
games in playtesting because the first few turns are so crucial and the more
games you can get in, the better. I
would like to say that I was both right and wrong. It is important to practice your ‘openings’
so to speak. Deployment and maneuver the
first few turns is key, and you SHOULD do a lot of the 3 turn games in order to
get enough reps with it to be comfortable.
But I did observe that a lot of people struggled to win games, despite
being far ahead after the first few turns.
In a tournament where you have to balance multiple objectives, closing
out the games can be a challenge. I
think it would be highly useful for people to get comfortable with winning
games with complicated scenarios. In two
of my matches I won because I was simply more mindful of the objectives than my
opponent. In my final match against Troy, he jumped out to a
huge lead in the game, but it wasn’t decided until the final turn because he
struggled to finish me off, and I persisted in focusing on the mission
objectives. He should have been able to
sweep me clear, but he allowed me to stay in the game. I don’t want it to seem like I’m saying
anything negative about his skills, but an example of something I saw over and
over again. Player A jumped out to a
huge lead and slowly but surely Player B clawed his way back into the game. Across the board, it seems 40k players need
as much practice winning on the last turn of the game as on the first.

Tournament Preparedness

1. Sleep and hangovers. How many of my opponents complained about
lack of sleep and/or being hungover? A
lot. I overheard similar comments all
weekend. I’m not telling you not to
drink and have fun at the con. But you
have to establish what your goals actually are.
You can’t get mad at losing a game when you only got 3 hours of sleep
and you’re hungover. If your goal is to
hang out with friends, drink some beers, and throw dice by all means have a
blast. If your goal is to 8-0 the NOVA,
try to get a good night’s sleep every night and don’t drink to the point where
you’ll be hungover the next morning.

2. Nutrition.
This is another thing I observed people were epic failing across the
board. I saw people filling their maw
with gross pizza, McDonalds, candy, soda, fried chicken wings, and oil soaked
Italian subs. I also heard dozens of
people complain about fatigue and exhaustion.
Not a coincidence. Yes, the food
at the hotel was garbage, and the food nearby was garbage. But a little foresight remedied that. I found a nearby grocery store and I bought
healthy food to stock up on. Every
morning my breakfasts were greek yogurt and fresh fruit. In between rounds and for lunch I noshed on
almonds and fruit. Even by Round 8, when
everyone else was universally agreed to be at the end of their endurance, I
felt fine. I credit my freshness in the
later rounds of the tournament to the fact I was eating clean food all weekend
and not loading myself down with sodium and greasy food. Clean food, along with sufficient sleep gave
me a measurable advantage. I know this kind of thing can sound preachy, and it probably is preachy, but I'm speaking the truth. If you want to be at your best, it's good advice. If you don't care about maximizing your performance, feel free to disregard.

4 comments:

A well written and insightful article. Most of it reinforces what you have previously written about, and I am interested to read if the lessons you have described were apparent or applicable to other combatants at NOVA

1) To be honest, I never really had a problem with my four squads taking objectives. They were incredibly durable, but that also could be attributed to the quality of opponent's I was facing. Then again, I was in that bracket...so I can't really say anything negative about them can I? :D

The problem that I DID have, however, was trying to knock other people's troops off objectives. This really became a problem for a variety of reasons, which I'll explore later.

2) I faced AV14 a grand total of 2 times. And I made that AV14 irrelevant via movement blocking. As a result, they didn't have an impact on my games and I didn't need melta. That blocking would have been even easier with dual/triple-land raider lists, there would have been fewer Rhinos to shoot at. However, if those LRs managed to get to an objective, I would have had difficulties getting it off that objective. This will be addressed in my future lists as well. ;)

3) This point is critical. There was such a prevalence of AV11 and 3+ armor, it was ridiculous. It is an absolute must that an army has the ability to kill both with relative ease.

Gameplay:

1) Hopefully I'm not considered one of the complainers. I was caught unprepared, yes...but I took it in stride. ;)

The terrain definitely disadvantaged during my games, but I did my best to take advantage of whatever fire lanes available to make the most of it. At no time during the actual event did I make any negative comments about the terrain. There were others that did however.

While I saw some other very shooty armies on the top tables as well, those were mech IG, Blood Angels, and Dark Eldar. All of these deal with this type of terrain easily. Even if I took Dozer Blades, they are the gimped versions that have no real value. :)

I simply did what I could, with the army I had, to salvage games. I made every loss I had very close; down to the last couple rolls of the game. Considering my disadvantage, I'm very pleased with how I played to produce results. I will be better prepared next time and won't be caught with my pants down. :D

2) In my games at least, I didn't win or lose until the last turn in each of my games (with two exceptions). The only thing the first three turns gave me was to realize how ineffective my shooting was. lol! I definitely think you need to playtest the whole game.

Tournament Preparedness:

1) This one I blame on myself. I was already exhausted from lack of sleep due to my procrastination painting (painted 1750 points in two days). That won't happen again. Then I did the Barcrawl and we got back way later than I would have liked. So my first day was rough. Got a good night sleep for the next day though, and I really noticed the difference during my Day Two games.

2) Nutrition wise, I did a pretty good job on this front. Kept myself hydrated with water and/or Powerade. Stayed away from pop and alcohol during the tournament itself. Food was good the first day, but the second day didn't work out so hot. My lunch break got killed by drops (which caused long delays for my bracket) and the Nova staff's strict adherence to their schedule. So I was forced to sustain myself on a bag of nuts. :(

Overall, a damn good overview on important things that went down at Nova Open. :D

You neglected to mention caloric intake specifically. I know that mine increased by nearly half from a regular day back when I was regularly competing at chess tournaments. Even at more low key tournaments like we get with 40K I have a spike in minimum up take.